Posted on 06/03/2026 5:51:50 AM PDT by Pontiac
But the deepest of the Finger Lakes hides secrets down below. Many have heard what can only be described as cannon shots coming out of nowhere. Known as “Seneca guns” or “Seneca drums,” the phenomenon was thought by the local Seneca Tribe to be the bellowing shouts of Manitou, the Great Spirit, when he was angry. Later, European settlers thought they were hearing ghosts of Seneca warriors still fighting for their land as the ground turned red with blood. It also inspired James Fenimore Cooper to write his short story The Lake Gun, in which he observes: “A sound resembling the explosion of a heavy piece of artillery, that can be accounted for by none of the known laws of nature. The report is deep, hollow, distant, and imposing. The lake seems to be speaking to the surrounding hills, which send back the echoes of its voice in accurate reply.”
Researcher Tim Morin, of SUNY ESF (Environmental Science and Forestry) in Syracuse, New York, had another idea: that there could be a physical explanation for it. As early as the 19th century, scientists were theorizing that the mysterious booms could be explosions of gas trapped in the lakebed. Geologist Herman Fairchild proposed the same thing in 1934 when he stated that “the explanation is bubbles of natural gas escaping from a layer of sandstone deep in the earth and coming up through the waters of the lake, where they burst with a booming sound.” In 1971, geoscientist William F. Ahrnsbrak said it was “conceivable” that methane bubbles were bursting through the mud.
Researcher Tim Morin, of SUNY ESF (Environmental Science and Forestry) in Syracuse, New York, had another idea: that there could be a physical explanation for it. As early as the 19th century, scientists were theorizing that the mysterious booms could be explosions of gas trapped in the lakebed. Geologist Herman Fairchild proposed the same thing in 1934 when he stated that “the explanation is bubbles of natural gas escaping from a layer of sandstone deep in the earth and coming up through the waters of the lake, where they burst with a booming sound.” In 1971, geoscientist William F. Ahrnsbrak said it was “conceivable” that methane bubbles were bursting through the mud.
Morin and his research team from SUNY ESF and Cornell University had initially set out on another mission. While using sonar to survey the lake’s fabled shipwrecks, they found the lakebed was pockmarked with 144 huge craters, each around 30 feet deep and 400 feet wide. They sampled lake water and material from deep pockets of sediment in the darkest reaches of the lake. These samples finally gave away Seneca Lake’s secret. In the lab, Morin found traces of methane and other gases that occur beneath the lake, proving what Fairchild and Ahrnsbrak had predicted earlier without advanced enough equipment to investigate.
The booms were not aliens or cryptids or phantom battles, but monstrous bubbles of methane that would erupt from under the lakebed after years of pressure buildup, leaving craters behind. When a bubble reaches the surface, it ruptures with enough force to send a shockwave that sounds like cannon fire across the lake. That was the ghostly firing that had echoed through many restless nights. The lake’s immense volume also has something to do with literally turning up the volume. Because it holds about 4.2 trillion gallons of water and is up to 618 feet deep in some places, with a lakebed that reaches 200 feet below sea level, it acts as an amplifier for the infamous booms.
Seneca Lake formed from an ancient glacier that melted after the last Ice Age. For scientists, it’s an example that shows just how much gas might be lurking under similar lakes, and it can be usefully compared to other similar “lake gun” phenomena across the planet. Some even belch out amounts of methane that could be potentially lethal. But Seneca Lake’s cannons aren’t a deadly threat of that kind, and the recent slowdown in booms is a piece of welcome relief for light sleepers and the easily startled.
The envior Mentalists blame the clear lake water on acid rain - or they did back in the 20th century. I haven’t heard much about acid rain since they latched onto global warming. Although they are now transitioning to global cooling.
It would be an "implosion" similar to a thunderclap.
The gas breaking through the surface is breaking a two dimensional interface. When the gas is released in to the air the water fills the void from 180 degrees.
Think spherically. The bubble would be an ovoid sphere as it rises. When it breaks at the surface to release the gas, I'd bet there's a hell of a hole.
With a bubble breaking the surface in water there will be a wave that meets at the center but I don't believe it will be enough to make a huge noise unless the bubble was several miles wide.
Where'd you get that number? The craters at the bottom are 400ft across. Assuming the bubble would be a sphere that size, that's 70 million gallons of water.
I asked the Brave AI this question: "If a bubble of methane 400ft in diameter broke the surface of a lake, how big of a wave would it produce?"
Here is the reply I received:
When this bubble bursts at the surface, it displaces a nearly equivalent volume of water upward and outward suddenly. This is comparable to underwater volcanic eruptions, gas hydrate releases, or even small-scale meteor impacts in terms of sudden water displacement.
2. Wave Height Estimate
Empirical and numerical models of sudden gas releases (e.g., limnic eruptions like Lake Nyos, 1986) suggest that such an event could generate initial wave heights of 30 to 100+ feet (9–30+ meters) near the source.
The wave would decay with distance, but could still be several meters high hundreds of meters away, depending on lake geometry.
3. Wave Type
This would not be a typical oscillatory wind wave but a solitary wave or impulse wave, characterized by:
🔬 Supporting Science
Research on gas bubble dynamics shows that large ascending bubbles can induce nonlinear water surface responses, especially when they reach the surface and collapse violently.
Studies on methane seeps and limnic eruptions indicate that rapid gas release can generate dangerous waves and seiches in enclosed water bodies.
Wave energy is proportional to the square of wave height. So even moderate increases in wave height correspond to large increases in destructive potential. Hence, My assumption of the size of the bubble is likely quite exaggerated. I'm guessing the bubble isn't nearly 400ft across but makes a crater that big by explosion when it breaks the surface of the mud on the bottom.
Thanks for the post, that was fun.
That is because they put scrubbers on the coal burning plants in KY, OH, WV, PA, NY and others. OR those coal burning plants have shut down. Mostly because burning the Methane(natural gas)is cheaper, cleaner and readily available.
In addition, we all drive automobiles with catalytic converters. Our cars do not put out as much pollution. Neither do our Semi trucks, locomotives, tractors or diesel pickup trucks. All diesel engines over 25 HP either have a reburn valve or use DEF.
This has made the air cleaner. There is not the SMOG over the LA area like there used to be(except when the houses/forests are burning).
My previous house had an in ground pool. Whenever we would get a big thunderstorm in the summer and received an inch or two of rain in a short period it would screw up the PH in the pool. I asked the pool store guy why. He said that the rain washes all the sulfur and other particles out of the air and into your pool. A lot of those particles are Sulfur from auto exhausts. So, as they mix with water they make a very mild sulfuric acid. Which is why the PH in my pool got raised. So, I needed to pour a box of PH Decreaser into the pool(22M gallons) after a heavy rain.
Basically acid rain.
Gas-X? 😁🤙
FYI, I am sure they still have acid rain in CHINA.
From all the coal fired electrical generation plants.
Also, keep in mind that we really did pollute the air and water back in the 1930s-1980s than we do today.
The river in Cleveland actually caught on fire because all the crap they were dumping in it. That all spilled into Lake Erie and Ontario.
I grew up in Buffalo. There used to warnings on the radio that pregnant women should not consume the fish out of Lake Ontario more than once a week. That is because the amount of MERCURY in the apex predator fish species like Lake Trout.
In Niagara Falls, NY they buried thousands of barrels of chemicals then built a school and neighborhood on top of it.
50% of the people living there got cancer.
It was called Love Canal.
The EPA really did clean up the environment in the USA.
I can think of three Super Fund sites within ten miles of where I live right now in NH. One company made hand tools. They dumped all sorts of chemicals out back. Another made paint. The ground around there is toxic from the stuff they poured into it.
Another is a plastics company that screwed up the water table so bad near their plant that they had to pay to put every house/condo on city water.
I would imagine it’s similar to the noise that comes from a pot or boiling syrup. You hear a very light “plup” when the gas escapes. Obviously, in the 2 quart pan on my stove the sound is minimal. But there is a physical explanation. The surrounding liquid is displaced, and when the gas escapes into the air, the surrounding liquid rushes back to fill in the hole.
Now imagine that thousands of times larger. The sound would be loud and sharp.
That seems plausible. Would have been a good one for the Myth Busters to do. I imagine they would replicate the bubble breaking the surface at a small scale, then do the math on the acoustic effects to determine how it would sound if it was a very large bubble.
Sherwood Inn salute.
Guess we should call this region the “Pull My Finger Lakes.”
Empirical and numerical models of sudden gas releases (e.g., limnic eruptions like Lake Nyos, 1986) suggest that such an event could generate initial wave heights of 30 to 100+ feet (9–30+ meters) near the source.
And yet we have no reports of waves accompanying these Booms.
Seneca is the very definition of a small lake. It is 38 miles long and 3 miles at its widest. People build their homes right at the edge of the water, just a foot or two above the water.
People would have noticed a 30 foot wave.
+1
At last, the real source of "glow-ball" warming has been discovered.
You beat me to it.
Correct. Which is why I posited that before looking further into the possibilities.
RE: turns out to be underground gas....
Jerry Lewis as the Nutty Professor might be interested.
“No matter how large the bubble, there would not be enough pressure to create the sound.”
I think the boom is created when the gas bubble breaks the surface of the lake bottom when it blasts with such force it creates the craters, not when it breaks the surface of the water.
I wonder if the booms slowing down are related to “glacial rebound”. The massive ice pushed down on the earth and when it melted, the rocks rebounded, rising upwards. Sometimes this movement can cause small earthquakes, and I imagine even smaller fractures in the rock where the gas can escape. It wouldn’t surprise me that after 10,000 years the amount of movement has slowed.
Read about that with Bermuda triangles too
Read about them in high school.
Cool stuff
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